


Disarm

by smilebackwards



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Mild Religous Angst, Multi, Payment in Baked Goods, Returning Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 05:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6502063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank opens the door and blinks. The Yelp review wasn’t kidding. The waiting room looks like a goddamn bake sale.</p><p>(Or: The everybody lives AU where Frank Castle’s neighbor files a lawsuit against him and his wife laughs and gets her church friend Matt to help.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disarm

**Author's Note:**

> For [this](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/7552.html?thread=14606720#cmt14606720) prompt. 
> 
> If the formatted bit is bothersome to anyone, you can click the Hide Creator's Style button at the top or most of the download options should strip it automatically.

Frank hasn’t been to church since he came back from Afghanistan. As a soldier, he reconciled himself with _thou shalt not kill_ a long time ago but there’s a difference between being a sniper—pointing an M40 at a man from 1000 meters and cleanly pulling the trigger—and what amounts to a small massacre, close up with a Ka-Bar and a Beretta, the blood thick in his mouth. He doesn’t regret it, but there’s some things that don’t wash clean.

Frank goes for a run on Sunday mornings while Maria takes the kids to mass. When he jogs back up the sidewalk this week, the van is already parked in the driveway. He can hear Maria laughing inside the house.

He opens the front door to find her sitting on the couch beside a man in a grey suit. They’re eating coffee cake off two of the beat up Corelle saucers Maria’s held on to since college, the pattern faded and wearing away. “Frank,” she says, smiling. “This is Matt Murdock. He’s a parishioner at St. Sebastian’s too.”

The man turns his head and for a second Frank sees his glasses and thinks _hipster_ before he realizes _blind._ “Nice to meet you, Frank,” Matt says. “Can I call you Frank?”

“Sure. Yeah,” Frank says. 

“Matt’s a lawyer,” Maria says, pointed.

“Oh, God,” Frank says. Look, the neighbor’s tree was overhanging the house. One good storm and the branch could have crashed right into Lisa’s room. So Frank trimmed it back. No big deal. Except a week later he’d been served a stack of legal documents with terms like “landmark tree” and “structural damage” and complete with a $6000 price tag. Frank’s killed actual human beings and not been subjected to this kind of censure.

“Maria told me about your case,” Matt says, which thank God because Frank sure as hell doesn’t want to talk about it. “You were well within your rights to cut back the branch overhanging your property, especially if we can prove it posed a danger. It’s the accusation of structural harm to the tree that we’d need to review.”

Matt takes out his wallet and offers Frank a business card. _Nelson and Murdock._ The print is raised against this fingers. “We charge twenty dollars an hour,” Matt says and Frank’s eyebrows shoot up. He’s looked up a few law firms online. That’s not half what they charge. “If you’re interested, give us a call and Karen will find a good time for us to meet.”

“Thank you, Matt,” Maria says. “Let me grab my keys and I’ll get you home.”

Matt unfolds his cane and smiles in Maria’s direction. “Thank you for the cake,” he says, standing and turning toward the door. Maria practically dives trying to move Frankie’s toy cars out of the way but Matt just redirects his path automatically when his cane taps a fire truck.

He must live relatively close by. It doesn’t take Maria more than fifteen minutes to drop him off and circle back home. “So?” she prompts, dropping her keys on the sidetable.

“Twenty bucks an hour?” Frank says, skeptical. “He’s either a really bad lawyer or a bleeding heart.”

Maria’s face is unimpressed in a way where Frank can clearly distinguish she’s unimpressed with him and not Murdock. “I’ve known Matt for over a year,” she says. “He’s extremely sweet and he won a ten thousand dollar settlement for Amy Landower when she had to go to housing court last month.”

Frank hates that he hardly knows any of the people Maria talks about anymore. Church friends and co-workers, Lisa’s teachers and Frankie’s playdates, all the people that have made up her life while he’s been away. He knows he needs to try harder.

“I’ll make you the appointment,” Maria says. She taps his nose, teasing. “I’m sure Matt will be able to get you out of this with a sentence of maybe one year, two tops.” 

“Thanks, darlin’,” Frank says, because contrary to what his unit might believe, he knows when a battle’s lost. 

Still, nobody ever accused Frank of being lazy about recon. Unfortunately, looking up Nelson and Murdock on Google nets him practically nothing. The only online presence they seem to have is a five-star Yelp rating with dozens of glowing reviews like: 

Señor Foggy y su esposo guapo son abogados maravillosos! You will no be sorry.

I would honestly consider getting wrongfully re-arrested just to have them defend me again if I couldn’t picture the disappointed looks on their faces.

Finally got away from my asshole ex and he tried to sue me for fucking defamation. Matt and Foggy took on my defense and were so sweet and kind walking me through everything that I was starting to get genuinely worried they’d be slaughtered by the prosecution during trial. 

Wow, is that not a thing that happened. Foggy made my ex cry in open court and then Matt made ME cry with his closing speech about truth and justice and the kind of virtuous ideals I’d usually call bullshit on. 

Did I mention they took my case pro bono? I’ll love them forever.

I will never be able to stereotype lawyers as morally bankrupt cut-throats ever again.. They let me set up a payment plan of blueberry pie, I’m not even kidding. And from the look of their waiting room, I’m clearly not the only one on this kind of alternative plan.

JUSSTICE IS BLIND!! XD Thanks for all you did for me, Matt!!

Frank’s going to have to do recon in person.

-

The office of Nelson and Murdock is housed in a squat brick building between an accountant and a temp service. It’s not quite in what Frank would consider the shady part of Hell’s Kitchen, but one of the windows is busted out and boarded up with cheap plywood. 

Frank opens the door and blinks. The Yelp review wasn’t kidding. The waiting room looks like a goddamn bake sale.

“Welcome to Nelson and Murdock,” a blonde says, smiling up from behind a desk. She glances down at a schedule. “Are you Mr. Castle?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Frank says.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Karen,” she says, coming around to shake Frank’s hand. “Let me get Matt and Foggy for you.” She taps on one of the closed office doors and Matt’s head pops out.

“Frank?” he says. “Good to see you again. Please come in.” He nods to a blond man with apple-round cheeks. “This is my partner, Foggy Nelson.”

Frank hands over the two pounds of documentation he’d been served with and gives a quick statement of the the sorry sequence of events while Foggy skims through the pages. 

“Do you have any pictures of the tree before you cut off the branch?” Matt asks.

 _No,_ Frank thinks immediately, because why the hell would he take before and after pictures? It wasn’t Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. But when he thinks about it, there’s a photograph on the piano with a wide view of the house, the tree bare and heavy with snow. Lisa and Maria are in the foreground, red-cheeked with cold as they shape out a snowman, Frankie making an angel near their feet. Frank isn’t in it but he thinks this year they could take another one just like it and he would be.

“Yeah,” Frank says. “I’ll bring it.”

“Great,” Foggy says. “We’ll get in touch with your neighbor’s lawyer, send someone out to do an assessment, and let you know what the next steps are.”

Frank almost doesn’t say anything as he heads for the door, eager to get home to Maria and the kids and a sit-down dinner that doesn’t come out of a bag, but he promised himself he’d try harder to fit back into civilian life, make a few friendly acquaintances at least. “You need somebody to help with that?” he asks, tilting his head toward the boarded up window.

“He motioned toward the window,” Foggy says, for Matt’s benefit.

Matt’s lips tip up in a slight, satisfied smile. “Local gang didn’t like us getting one of their members put away for assault,” he explains.

“You take a lot of cases like that?” Frank asks, concerned. He can feel his latent protective urges stirring. These are people Maria cares about.

“Criminal, tort, property,” Foggy reels off. “You name it. Someone needs defense, Matt will sign us up.”

“Only ethically sound cases,” Matt protests. “You love the challenge.”

Foggy looks at Matt fondly, nudges him with his shoulder. “I guess you got me there.”

Matt smiles and ducks his head. Frank hadn’t noticed the wedding ring on his finger until he started twisting it absently. When he glances at Foggy’s left hand, the matching silver band is suddenly obvious. _Oh,_ Frank thinks. _Partners._

“But yeah,” Foggy says. “I’ve got a cousin that does drywall but no contacts in the glass business. You know somebody good you can point us toward?”

“I can do it for you,” Frank says. He’s been doing mostly handy-man and construction work to fill the hours. Everyone was surprised when Frank took his twenty and got out but he was tired of the sand and blood under his nails. He prefers sawdust.

Frank brings his toolbox around the next afternoon. He measures the window and watches people come in and out of the office as he scrapes away the old putty and sands down the frame. A man with scuffed shoes and an Army jacket taps hesitantly on the door. An older woman brings something in a covered casserole dish.

 _Altarboys,_ Frank thinks, but it’s curiously fond.

“Frank,” Matt says, around six, as Frank’s packing away his tools, “can we interest you in some pollo a la cerveza? Mrs. Cardenas brought it by for us.”

“It’s chicken in beer sauce, man,” Foggy adds. “You haven’t lived.”

Frank’s not entirely sure how he ends up at Josie’s with them afterwards. He’d called Maria for an excuse to turn down the invitation but she’d sounded honestly thrilled to have him out of the house. She’d asked to be handed off to Matt and then Matt had given the phone to Karen and Frank’s here now.

It’s a dive bar with bottom-shelf liquor and sticky wood floors and Frank’s surprised how much he likes it. Karen beats him at pool and Matt is hilariously good at darts. Foggy walks him to the board and then back behind the throwing line, lifts Matt’s arm in vaguely the right direction and Matt throws bullseye, bullseye, bullseye.

Most of Frank’s old unit has been redeployed or scattered across the fifty states. There’s part of him that still feels disconnected, adrift, but watching Matt and Foggy encourage Karen to swallow an eel, he thinks, maybe, this could be the start of an odd kind of friendship.

-

The next time Frank sees Matt, he looks like hell. 

“Did you get mugged?” Frank asks, recognizing the swing of a fist in the bruise on Matt’s chin. His left eyebrow is neatly bisected with a cut.

“You should see the other guy,” Matt jokes.

Frank’s considering going to find the other guy because, Christ, anyone that mugs a blind guy—especially an altarboy like Matt—deserves at least one more punch in the face. “Got the glass last night,” Frank says. “Figured I’d come fit it in today if it won’t bother you.”

“That’s great,” Matt says. “Can I help?”

Frank lays down the glazing and lets Matt press the glass gently into place. Matt’s knuckles are bruised. Frank wonders if he really did get in a good shot.

Foggy arrives just as they’re finishing. “Oh, Matt,” Foggy sighs, his thumb tracing gently around the cut on Matt’s face. “It looks even worse this morning. Do you need some ice? I’ll go get you some ice.”

“It’s fine, Foggy,” Matt says, but he accepts a gentle kiss to the wound.

“Just got some news on your case,” Foggy tells Frank, passing a file folder into Matt’s hands. Frank blinks at what look like blank pages when Matt opens it until he recognizes the bumps of Braille.

“We had a certified arborist examine the damage,” Matt says, running his fingers along the thickened paper.

“Tree guy,” Foggy clarifies. “He said you’re golden. It wasn’t anything from the cutting that caused damage. Tree had some kind of fungal infection. We got a court date for next week and it should be a slam-dunk.”

-

Frank sits at the defendant’s table in a plain black suit. Foggy mentioned that wearing his uniform might have extra visual impact, but Frank wore his dress blues when he married Maria and when he was given the Navy Cross, when they laid Schoonover and Gosnell to rest. It would feel petty here, for this.

It only takes twenty minutes for the judge to rule in their favor. And then it’s all over save for the recriminating glares and the inevitable, uncomfortable silences that will occur when Frank and his neighbor take out the trash at the same time.

Frank’s pretty sure he can deal with that.

-

Sunday is the Feast of St. Michael and Frank thinks that’s goddamn fitting so while Maria’s coaxing Frankie into wearing his dress shoes, Frank changes his jeans for a pair of nice slacks and puts a suit jacket over his polo shirt. Maria doesn’t even do a double take when she sees Frank in his Sunday best, just hustles him into the van along with the kids.

“Wonderful to meet you, Frank,” Father Lantom says warmly, after the service. He doesn’t say _finally._ Doesn’t look like he’s even thinking it. “Come visit me for a latte and a chat sometime. If you’d like.”

Matt stands from the pew behind them and genuflects to the altar. “He’s very proud of the espresso machine the Chamber of Commerce donated,” he grins.

“Pride is a sin, Matthew,” Father Lantom says, dry. “Good coffee is not.”

“I’ll think about it,” Frank says, and means it. When he looks up at the stained glass windows, all the angels and saints with their heavenly swords and their bowed heads, the light streaming through them is purple and blue and gold and not red, red, red. 

Frank reaches for Maria’s hand and puts an arm around Lisa’s shoulders and thinks this must be what it feels like, to be home.


End file.
